This page is a collection of useful tips and suggestions for speakers. Please feel free to edit the page and add your own!

Software

Here is a list of software you can use to prepare your screencast.

IRC (with ERC)

For a bare bones ERC setup for participating in EmacsConf as a speaker, add the following to your init file. Then, either mark the whole region and do M-x eval-region RET, or alternatively restart your Emacs. Finally, do M-x erc-tls RET to start ERC.

(require 'erc)
(setq erc-server "chat.freenode.net"
      erc-port 6697
      erc-nick "your-nick"
      erc-autojoin-channels-alist
      '(("freenode.net"
         "#emacsconf"
         "#emacsconf-questions"
         ;; "#emacsconf-org"
         "#emacsconf-accessible")))

References to learn more about ERC:

Recording video

  • Peek - an animated GIF (and more) recorder
  • ffmpeg - command-line application
  • OBS - Open Broadcasting Studio

Recording audio

  • ffmpeg - command-line application

Displaying keystrokes and mouse clicks

  • showkeys - simple program to display keys being pressed on the screen
  • key-mon - display the current state of keyboard and mouse
  • command-log-mode - a global minor mode showing typed keybindings and associated command names

Video editing

  • pitivi - simple and powerful graphical application
  • kdenlive
  • blender

Personal tips

Damien Cassou

To ease my work, I wrote screencasting.el to start 3 processes simultaneously: showkeys, ffmpeg for audio and ffmpeg for video.